How long can multilingual societies stay multilingual?
‘My mother language is for my heart. English is for my stomach.’
— An English trainer from my college.
Native language sufficiency
What percentage of people in the world know only their mother tongue and nothing else?
In many grown countries like Japan, Switzerland, Italy, etc the necessity to learn another language for the stomach is less than that of the growing countries. We don’t have to mention English-speaking countries.
It is worthy to reiterate that they did not choose their births in developed countries.
Birth is purely random.
Can we make our children stick to their mother tongue?
When people migrate to other parts of the world, their native language can fade away.
Even if the father and mother are very religious about their native language, it is still a challenge to make their son or daughter talk two languages, one outside in the schools and society and one inside the home.
What should we do with those children?
We can talk to them about the importance of not forgetting the mother tongue. Show them emotional videos movies that make them realize the importance of their mother tongue. We can make them talk to the elders in the society and so on.
What if they don’t care even after all those emotional attempts? What is the next step?
Indians who know only one language
In India, not everyone is running behind the second language that brings them opportunities.
A huge number of people live their lives dealing with their native people every day and don’t learn another language.
They may own shops, run businesses, and end up staying like that throughout their lives.
Maybe their stomach did not need another language just like the people in developed nations.
How to make someone learn a new language?
Imagine I have a friend who runs his local business and doesn’t know another language.
I can talk to him saying, ‘If you learn *this* language, you can expand your business!’
What if the person is content with what he is doing already? I can call him lazy and irresponsible and provoke him. What if he is okay being called lazy? What should we do with that person?
Second language
Look at the surrounding people who can talk two languages and think about how did they gain the second language?
I’m a software engineer. I learned engineering in English. The programs I write are in English. I learn new concepts in English. Stack overflow is in English. I watch English movies now and then. I gained English.
A person who works in Iraq would have gained their language, eventually. The person who travels a lot will pick up languages here and there.
Third language in India
People gain languages as they use it. It depends more on lifestyle than on choice.
Until the eighth standard, I had Hindi. I forgot most of it as I did not use that in my daily life. I tried to learn Hindi in my college days along with my friend, but I was not disciplined enough to stick to the routine.
You can call me lazy. And I accept that.
I tried different languages in the Duolingo app. I did not stick to the routine and gained no new languages.
How to make a group of people embrace anything ethically?
As a programmer, I want the entire nation or even the world to be good at JavaScript programming. I think it is easy to gain, and it is very rewarding.
What am I doing about it? I write and publish YouTube videos about technology and programming.
Similarly, people who want to promote their beliefs and interests are doing it to their abilities. People may take it or leave it. And that is how it is already.
How to make a group of people embrace anything unethically?
Imagine a dictator who wants his people to be good at JavaScript. Depending upon what rights he believes he has over his people, he can do a lot of things.
- He may make JavaScript compulsory from school and college.
- He may punish/ban/tax other programming languages like Python or Java to make them less accessible.
- He may change the signs in common places like railways stations, banks, and post offices in such a way that people who don’t know JavaScript can’t navigate.
It is not impossible. But what did the dictator get out of it other than proving himself right after creating all those hardships for the people?
Cultures? Beliefs? Religions? Languages?
Imagine a person from an imaginary religion called ‘Silhari’. She talks to her god in her dreams and her god asked her to work towards turning everyone into the Silhari religion.
And somehow she becomes a ruler. She gains a followers' group to achieve what she wants.
- What will she do?
- What will be the response from the people?
‘I love something. Others love something else. I think they are completely wrong. I think they should embrace what I love. It is not for me. It is for the greater good.’ — says every person with an unfalsifiable belief.
The more convinced we are at something, the less empathetic we become towards “others”.
What is there to conserve?
Any multilingual society will converge to use one language that is convenient, leaving the rest behind.
Looking back, How many multilingual societies prolonged themselves as multilingual till now?
For the decades to come, English may eradicate every other language because of its simplicity and global opportunities.
Should we care? That is up to the individuals themselves. If a group decides they don’t want a language, they have all the right to do so.
How many extinct languages have made a comeback into people’s mouths?
Thank you.
